Comics Characters Occasionally Recognize Limited Resources

Cover to Uncanny X-Men #520, art by Terry Dodson

An interesting point comes up in Uncanny X-Men #520. During the "Utopia" crossover, Scott Summers and the X-Men created massive engines to lift Asteroid M out of the ocean. This allowed the X-Men to create a floating haven for all the mutants left in the world. The resulting island refuge was dubbed Utopia. And mutantkind would live happily ever after, isolated from people who would look to hurt them...

Unfortunately, the X-Men were very short sighted in their construction of this new home. No-one thought to mention that when you build giant engines to lift an asteroid, you need to power and repair those same engines. Woops.

This is the point brought up by Dr. Nemesis (a member of the mutant science team put together by Beast) in Uncanny #520. In a briefing with Cyclops, Nemesis reveals that the engines keeping Utopia afloat are failing and that the island is sinking. The only solution he can think of is to tap into the wealth of Warren Worthington (the X-Man, Angel) and continuously build replacement engines. But, as Nemesis points out, the consequence of this would be to bankrupt Worthington.

This is important because, finally, in a comic book, a character acknowledges the fact that even a billionaire still has limited financial resources.

Comics history is filled with characters who have seemingly bottomless pockets. Think about it. For years, the Xavier Institute has been sustained by Professor Xavier and Warren Worthington. Somehow, the nebulous assets held by these two men has paid for housing and feeding hundreds of mutants, building countless supersonic jets and periodically rebuilding a massive mansion when Sentinels blow it up.

Batman is able to create an arsenal of weaponry that could conquer a small European nation. He has literally hundreds of cars, jets, boats, explosives, grappling hooks, and bat-shaped shuriken that he created using his personal wealth. And his assets are so great that Bruce Wayne is able to build all of these things without anyone noticing that he is using his money to build ridiculous contraptions. This means that he can buy a Bat-plane without creating enough of a dent to arouse suspicion. That is a LOT of money.

But in Uncanny X-Men # 520, we see that wealth is, in fact, finite and that someone can't keep buying engines for a mutant asteroid indefinitely. It's nice to see someone in this universe who is in touch with reality. Even if that person is an immortal man in a white suit and surgeon's mask who dual wields hypodermic injection pistols.

Dr. Nemesis from Uncanny X-Men #504, Art by Terry Dodson

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Extremely Rich Character Sighting: Dexter Bennett

Amazing Spider-Man #607 by Joe Kelly, Mike McKone & Adriana Melo

Here's a question for the readers: How rich do you suppose Dexter Bennett is? This guy claims to have been responsible for about 50% of the new construction in the 1980s. Remember that the construction industry in comic books is a highly profitable organization--more so than on real-Earth. The reason being simply that there are devastating blows to major DC and Marvel cities occurring basically every single day. On Monday, Bullseye might blow up a building, on Tuesday the Green Goblin might pumpkin bomb a bank, on Wednesday Galactus might try to take over again, and so on. It's become quotidian.

The 1980s was a particularly significant decade in overwhelming destruction. There were major events/storylines such as "Secret Wars", "Hulk in Exile," "Mutant Massacre," "Armor Wars," "The Evolutionary War," "Inferno," "Atlantic Attacks," and so forth. And those are just the major events. They don't take into account your run-of-the-mill pumpkin bombing.

So when Dexter Bennett says that he was involved in a huge chunk of construction in the 80s, we know that he must be loaded. About 1/2 the time New York City gets completely leveled by one of the aforementioned events, his company is there doing all the building repairs and restoring everything back to normal so that the villains can knock it all down again. Now of course we don't know how much of this sort of post-apocalyptic reconstruction is typically done by private companies like Bennett's. It might be a public works effort. In fact, there might be some sort of task force standing by with shovels waiting to rebuild after the next attack. Also, we don't know what Bennett exactly means by "new construction" -- it might imply that his business dealt exclusively with new endeavors, not renovation.

If he was involved, though, this could be one of the richest men in the world. Not only would have have made a ton of money from operations, but he claimed that he had only gotten into the business for "tax shelters only." The implication here is that he was already independently wealthy, but didn't own a business. Can you imagine how much money this guy must have? He may have more assets than Tony Stark. He certainly does now since he has extra cash to throw around to purchase newspapers (Dexter Bennett is now the owner of the DB) and Tony's assets have been seized by Norman Osborn.

It's a wonder that Bennett did not become a supervillain himself. After all, we know from one of our earlier posts that millionaires = crazy. Actually, Dexter Bennett is so sane that he backed out of a deal his partner made that he knew to be criminal. And boy what a deal it was. More on this later...

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Millionaires= Crazy

In the world of comic books any individual who has more than 5 million dollars in saving or assets immediately becomes bat-shit insane. It's a strange rule, but it seems that every independently wealthy individual in superhero comics decides that fighting/committing crime is the best way to spend their free time. They ignore possible hobbies like golfing, yachting, and collecting antique cars and go straight into wearing a mask and creating a global organization designed to save/destroy/conquer the world. The examples in comic book fiction are nearly limitless.

In terms of billionaire superheroes there are: Batman, Iron Man, Moon Knight, The Golden Age Sandman, Professor Xavier, etc. The list of wealthy villains is even more dramatic: Lex Luthor, Ra's Al Ghul, Norman Osborn (The Green Goblin), Hush, Count Nefaria, Spymaster, Justin Hammer, Obadiah Stane, The Mandarin, Sebastian Shaw, etc. It seems that anyone who encounters a financial windfall in the comic book universe immediately invests all of money into either saving the world or destroying it.

In some cases, the actions of these comic book millionaires seem somewhat logical. Professor Xavier used his money to create a sanctuary for mutants who were being persecuted. He also used his money to train said mutants using a holographic "Danger Room" created with technology gleaned from alien bird-people. But with that superfluous spending aside, we can look at the Xavier Institute as version of the WMCA for people who can shoot lasers out of their eyes and with slightly less gay sex on the grounds (see: The Village People). Wealthy industrialist Tony Stark built the Iron Man suit to save his life and then continues flying around in it because he's a joy-riding arrogant ego-maniac. I understand that.

But then there's this man...

Norman Osborn started as a weapons and chemical designer. But like all wealthy industrialists do in the comic book world, he decided profit margins weren't enough. And as such he began riding around on a bat-shaped glider in a green and purple outfit and started throwing pumpkin bombs. It truly boggles my mind when i consider the amount of research and development that must have gone into the creation of pumpkin-shaped explosives. Some poor R&D guy had to sit in front of his computer screen, working on plastic explosive casings while dealing with Norman standing over his shoulder and shouting, "No, it needs to be MORE ORANGE!"

It simply boggles the mind that an industrialist who had made millions designing lucrative compounds, weapons, and technology would then perform an engineering about-face and decide that the best means of long distance transportation would be a halloween-themed glider that uses foot-grips to secure the rider. That's right, Norman Osborn expects a commando to be secured to a glider flying 800 miles an hour by the same technology that keeps boots connected to skis. Not to mention the fact that Norman Osborn decides that he is the best person to use this new technology. A company of hundreds spends millions of dollars to create a new series of weapons only to have the company CEO steal it all and fly around new york wearing a Halloween costume. In this economic downturn, it seems truly tragic for a company to nearly go bankrupt because their fourth-quarter profits were spent "trying to kill Spider-Man."

This persistent pattern of a wealthy individual building a financial empire through shrewd economic skill and then destroying it almost instantly through costumed antics shows only one thing. In comic books, all money is coated with a powerful hallucinogen. When you aquire enough of it you go crazy and then act accordingly. I will no doubt come back to this in later posts.

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